FRANCE—Limits to e-mail monitoring

 

Employees’ rights to privacy in the workplace were reaffirmed by the Supreme Court on 5 July 2011. The decision brings limits to the monitoring of employees’ professional e-mailboxes.

A manager of an insurance company was dismissed for having intimate correspondence with another employee and for storing private messages with erotic pictures attached on his professional e-mailbox. The employer argued that the employee knew that these e-mails and attachments would be seen by his assistant and that exchanging personal e-mails within the company’s infrastructure was prohibited by internal rules.

Contrary to the Labor Court, the Court of appeal considered the dismissal invalid and sentenced the employer to pay damages to the dismissed employee.

The Supreme Court confirmed the decision of the Court of appeal, pointing out that if a file (it seems the term “file” was used to cover private e-mails and erotic pictures stored on the professional mailbox, as it was the case in the dismissal letter) not expressly flagged as “private” can be opened by the employer, its contents cannot be used against the employee if it appears that it is private.

The Supreme Court decided that the employer’s use of private e-mails and erotic pictures stored on the professional mailbox of an employee violates the employee’s right to privacy in the workplace.

In this case, the Supreme Court stressed some important facts—the litigious e-mails and erotic pictures attached had been sent by another employee; the dismissed employee had only stored them in the e-mailbox. He did not share them with anyone or record them on the hard drive of his computer.